I mentioned in the Unforgiven review that that show was
Sunny’s last WWF pay-per-view appearance, but this one actually is (I somehow
forgot this show and jumped in my mind from Unforgiven to King of the Ring). She definitely looks worse for wear and her
firing shortly after this was not surprising.
Ross hypes the LOD’s AWA background on commentary since Milwaukee was a
former AWA stop and some AWA legends are being honored later in the show. This has a hot start, but the DOA choke the
life of it (literally). The DOA tries an
illegal switch late in the match, but Droz nails Skull in the head when he runs
the ropes and the LOD wins. This match
isn’t putting either team anywhere near the title picture, though. Rating: *

–Intercontinental
Champion The Rock comes out and runs down the Milwaukee beer industry and their
women. Faarooq runs out and gives the
Rock a piledriver on a chair (sort of) and then beats up some of the Nation
before he leaves the ring. The Rock does
a stretcher job and Ross and Lawler speculate on whether we will have an
Intercontinental championship match tonight or not. The most ridiculous part of the stretcher job
is they do not have EMTs come out to the ring and Owen is the one who has to
put a neck collar on the Rock.

–Michael Cole talks
to WWF Champion Steve Austin in the locker room. Austin says he doesn’t care about the odds he
faces tonight and says that no one has volunteered to watch his back in the
title match.

Blackman is like one of those non-credible challengers
that Jarrett used to face in 1995 when he was Intercontinental champion. During the bout, Al Snow is shown doing
commentary with the Spanish announce team dressed in stereotypical Mexican
attire (he’s eventually removed by security and gets a bigger reaction than the
match). The real
highlight of this match is Lawler reading off country song lyrics to narrate
big moments. This is a serviceable match,
but it has very little heat, and Jarrett picks up the cheap win via Lee’s
interference. You can hear the crickets
as he makes his way to the back. Rating:
**

–Marc Mero giving
Sable the conditions for the match between him and someone of Sable’s choosing
on last week’s RAW is shown.

Ross makes an allusion to Mero’s Johnny B. Badd gimmick
by telling Lawler “You know, Mero looks a lot like Little Richard.” Back in 1998, I thought Sable would pick the
Undertaker as the superstar to face Mero.
However, Sable opts to choose herself for this match and Mero feigns
sadness at having to wrestle her. He
decides to lay down for her, but when Sable covers him, he reverses it and
sends her packing. A guy in the front
row yells “NO! NO!” when Mero reverses
the pin and that is pretty funny. Mero
actually gets a decent pop for the pin, but sadly he wouldn’t be done with
Sable yet. This was actually Mero’s last
victory on a WWF pay-per-view.

–Cole recaps what
we have just seen, as if we are idiots, and Sable thanks her fans for their
support and tries to cry and can’t.

–Dok Hendrix is in
the locker room with the Nation of Domination, but they refuse to talk with
him. Commissioner Slaughter has forced
the Rock to defend the Intercontinental title regardless of what Faarooq did to
him earlier. There’s something that
doesn’t seem quite fair about that to me, especially since Faarooq was
unprovoked.

This is back when a bonus match actually made sense
within existing storylines. The Kaientai
feud was the WWF’s attempt to give Bradshaw something to do after the New
Blackjacks split up and the NWA angle was a bust, but it never really took off. Seeing Bradshaw face Kaientai is like
watching a real world version of Gulliver’s
Travels. It leads to some
entertaining spots, though, with Bradshaw viciously slamming members of
Kaientai on the arena floor and having all of the members of Kaientai try to
take him down simultaneously. Everything
devolves into some really fun spots for the finish, which sees Kainetai’s
numbers overwhelm their opponents and continue to build momentum with a
win. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot
for Kaientai to do after the Michinoku feud because their size created a
credibility problem. Rating:
**½

This is the big blowoff for the Rock-Faarooq feud that
has been simmering throughout 1998, but Ross prefers to talk about it as an
extension of the Florida State-Miami football feud. The Rock initially refuses to come out for
the bout, so Commissioner Slaughter walks out and orders him to come to the
ring in ten seconds or forfeit the title.
So, we are supposed to buy Slaughter as a face in this situation after
he beat up Steve Austin a few weeks ago on RAW?
The Rock does come out and we get a whimper of a match to settle this
long-term feud. Faarooq was not
well-suited to playing a face and he would dabble around in the lower midcard
before the Acolyte tag team revived his career. After the match, Faarooq
piledrives the Rock and the Nation runs in to do a beatdown before D-Generation
X makes the save. THAT finally wakes up
the crowd. Rating: *½

This is really the last pay-per-view where Vader had a
great deal of credibility, but the WWF really spoiled the outcome by making
this a mask vs. mask match. I never
understood why that stipulation held up in kayfabe anyway since WWF viewers had
already seen Vader without his mask on several occasions, so who cares if he
loses it? Vader also did not get as much
airtime relative to Kane’s ongoing feud with the Undertaker, so that was
another clue that he was going to be cannon fodder here. The only real interesting event of this match
is when Vader hits Kane with a wrench that he acquires from underneath the
ring, but that isn’t enough to stop the Big Red Machine, who remains undefeated
against anyone not named the Undertaker. Rating: ½*

–After the match,
Vader is unmasked and Lawler acts like this is an unheard of event. In a funny moment, Kane puts the mask on Paul Bearer, who dances around like Vader and proclaims it “Paul Bearer time.” Cole interviews Vader, who announces that he’s
a “big, fat piece of shit.” One would
think this would create a small redemption angle for Vader that would see him
return to his roots and vault back up the card, but it was not meant to be.

–The Crusher and
Mad Dog Vachon are recognized in a small ceremony for AWA superstars. The crowd is very appreciative of both men
and I would guess that Jim Cornette played a role in putting this together,
probably over Kevin Dunn’s objections.
Lawler takes objection to the ceremony, makes fun of Mad Dog Vachon, and
the Crusher beats him up.

–Owen Hart, Kama
Mustafa & D-Lo Brown (w/Mark Henry) defeat Triple H & The New Age
Outlaws (w/X-Pac & Chyna) when Owen pins Triple H with a Pedigree on a tag
team title belt at 18:34:

For the first time tonight, the crowd is really buzzing
about a match. Owen is the most over
participant, getting an “Owen sucks” and being loudly booed when he enters the
match. Momentum swings back and forth
and when all hell breaks loose things really step up a notch as Chyna decks Mark
Henry and Billy Gunn and Triple H give D-Lo a spike piledriver on a tag team
title belt. However, Owen breaks that up
and gets a measure of revenge against Triple H by finally pinning him on
pay-per-view. Of course, by the time
that Owen has gotten this revenge he’s a heel and we’re supposed to be mad
about it. The match was just average,
but it put Kama and D-Lo on the same level as the more recognized members of
D-Generation X and thereby gave the Nation some credibility in their feud with
DX. Rating: **

–Hendrix interviews
Vince McMahon, Pat Patterson, and Gerald Brisco and McMahon mockingly says that
he will be an impartial referee tonight.
He says that if Austin touches him, he will stop the match and strip him
of the title and makes it very clear that the match will end “by his hand only.”

This is one of my all-time favorite matches and there are
so many things to love about it. First, Howard
Finkel gives a pre-written introduction for Patterson that compares him to
Wayne Gretzky, discusses Patterson surviving a “grueling” tournament in Rio de
Janeiro to win the Intercontinental title, and applauds him as a role model for
children. Second, Patterson gives the
most hilarious ring introductions ever by saying Brisco is the reincarnation of
Jim Thorpe and emphasizing that he’s a real Native American unlike Chief Jay
Strongbow, arguing that Vince makes “life worth living” and has a “yes I can”
attitude (too bad Linda didn’t run for Senate earlier and change the “I” in
that to “we”), arguing that Dude Love is an inspiration, and that Austin is a “foul
mouthed punk” and a “bum.” Third, as the
match proceeds, McMahon changes the rules to a no disqualification and falls
count anywhere match (which were hilariously dubbed as “reminders”), which
causes the Ross rage-o-meter to reach a 1.0.
And fourth, it has one of the wildest and craziest finishes to a WWF
title match, as McMahon is inadvertently laid out by a Love chair shot; the
Undertaker, who comes out before the match to watch Austin’s back, chokeslams
Patterson and Brisco through the ringside announce tables to prevent them from
counting a Love pin on Austin; and Austin takes an unconscious McMahon’s hand
to register the three count after he gives Love a Stunner. Ross sums the match up beautifully: “Steve Austin is the toughest son of a bitch
I ever saw!” This was my Match of the
Year for 1998 (I think it ended up finishing third in the PWI voting that year)
due to the great build up, the ability of the booking to draw a loud crowd
reaction, and a very witty ending. Rating:
*****

The Final Report Card: The WWF was still working toward “red hot”
status, so this show is still in the transition period where they were
reinforcing their gains against WCW. The
entire card aside from the main event is lackluster and is RAW fare, but the
main event is the only thing that needed to deliver at the time and it
did. Surprisingly, this show drew fewer
buys than Unforgiven and drew the fewest buys of any show in the Austin era. The only thing that I think could account for that is that the fans felt Austin winning was a foregone conclusion. I won’t give this show a thumbs up, since it is just a one match show, but if you have never
seen Austin-Love, then you need to check it out.